In a recent interview, Meise talked about making his film about finding love when one is confined and oppressed. The film shows his experiences and relationships with three very different men behind bars - Leo (Anton von Lucke), an assignation from 1968, Oskar (Thomas Prenn), his lover in 1957, and Viktor (Georg Friedrich), a straight man whom he knows in each time period. It is not his first time in jail he had previously been incarcerated for “deviant sexual practices” in 1945 and again in 1957. Director and cowriter Sebastian Meise’s remarkable drama opens in 1968 when Hans Hoffmann (a superb Franz Rogowski) is sentenced to two years in prison under Paragraph 175, which criminalizes homosexuality. “Great Freedom,” available for streaming on MUBI May 6, is a tough and tender film set almost entirely in a German prison.
